Understanding and Measuring Creative Thinking in Leaders

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180 THE 71F ADVANTAGEthis regard. At the same time, an executive with an extremely high drivefor openness may initiate change for its own sake to fulfill a thirst forstimulation and excitement, thus squandering resources and puttingthe organization at unnecessary risk (Jacobs). Openness is ultimately nodifferent, therefore, than the other dimensions of personality in terms ofthe need to achieve a reasonable balance. However, there is little doubtthat its elements are closely tied to an affinity for the kind of creativeproblem-solving and complex thinking skills associated with effectiveleadership in volatile and changing environments (Puccio, Murdock,and Mance, 2007; Yukl, 2002), and therefore with the leader behaviorsassociated with transformational, charismatic, and visionary leadership(House and Shamir, 1993).MethodParticipantsThe subjects in this study were students attending a U.S. Governmentsenior Service college during the 2006–2007 academic year. Thepresent study was reviewed and approved by the Institutional ReviewBoard at the National Defense University, and completion of any one ormore of the instruments was voluntary with the guarantee that all individualresults would remain confidential.All 292 U.S. students in the class completed either or both of thetwo instruments under examination here. Four international fellowsalso did so, but these subjects were removed from the analysis. Demographicdata were available for 266 of the U.S. students. Of these, 75.6percent (201) were male, and 24.4 percent (65) female. The youngestparticipant was 32, and the oldest 59, with a mean age of 44.2 (standarddeviation = 4.5) and both a median and modal age of 43. A majorityof the participants were in the military (70.1 percent) with 29.9percent holding civilian positions. Of the 261 who reported their Serviceor component, 53 (20.3 percent) said Army, 64 (24.5 percent) AirForce, 43 (16.5 percent) Navy, 19 (7.3 percent) Marine Corps, 4 (1.5 percent)Coast Guard, 53 (20.3 percent) Department of Defense civilian,19 (7.3 percent) other Government agency civilian, and 6 (2.3 percent)reported that they were civilian industry fellows. Finally, regarding ethnicity,of the 250 responding to this question, 187 (74.8 percent) statedthey were non-Hispanic white, 31 (12.4 percent) African-American,
UNDERSTANDING AND MEASURING CREATIVE THINKING IN LEADERS 1819 (3.6 percent) Hispanic, 7 (2.8 percent) Asian and Pacific Islander, and16 (6.4 percent) chose “other.”MeasuresMini-markers. Gerard Saucier (1994) developed the mini-markers(MM) instrument as a shortened version of Lewis Goldberg’s (1992)100-item set of single adjective, unipolar markers for measuring theBig Five personality dimensions. It is representative of the lexical approach.While the 100-item set had respectable loadings on five factorsas predicted in factor analyses (Goldberg, 1992), they producedscales that were intercorrelated at moderately high levels (over .40)and included some “user-unfriendly” terms such as “imperturbable”and “uncharitable” (Saucier). By choosing “homogeneous” items thatloaded highest on their respective predicted factors and less than halfas highly on any other factor across a dozen samples, Saucier successfullywhittled down the adjective list to 40, with 8 items representingeach of the Big Five dimensions. Following Goldberg’s (1992) originaldesignations, he labeled these extraversion or surgency, agreeableness,conscientiousness, emotional stability, and intellect or openness.The resulting scales had better interitem correlations and orthogonalproperties than those reported by Goldberg, although reliability scores(coefficient alphas) were predictably, but marginally, sacrificed and remainedabove .73 (Saucier). Dwight, Cummings, and Glenar (1998)reported that the validity of the mini-markers compared favorablywith that of Goldberg’s full set of markers.The 40 items of the original mini-markers used in this study arefound in table 8–1. Eight single adjective items are included to measureeach of the Big Five factors. Participants were asked to rate howaccurately each trait presented describes them. Responses are thenscored on a 9-point scale, from 1 being extremely inaccurate to 9 beingextremely accurate. MM scale scores were constructed using Saucier’s(1994) original method. The appropriate 20 adjective responsesaddressing the negative pole of the relevant factor were reverse-coded(from 9 to 1) before being added together with the response scoresof their positive-pole counterparts to produce the respective Big Fivescale score. Each of the five scale scores was then divided by 8 to rescalethe sum to the original metric. There were no missing data byindividual item response, which rendered a total of 289 cases withcomplete MM data for analysis.
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